In the middle of winter quarter, just as midterms were passing, I had a sudden and debilitating realization: college wasn’t fun anymore and I was struggling to find my way. Feeling upset and lost, I started reaching out to campus friends and found that I wasn’t alone. Many of the girls I talked to felt the exact same way. Everyone swears that college is the best four years of your life and Hollywood portrays college as an amazing experience full of parties and fun. Social media doesn’t help the situation, making it look like everyone but you is having the time of their life. But if college hasn’t brought you four years of parties, if you haven’t met your best friend, if you haven’t found yourself, if you’re still homesick, and if you’re honestly just stressing about stress, you’re perfectly normal.
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It’s okay if you haven’t found yourself yet.
We all have that friend that has known what they want to do with their life since second grade and is still firm in those beliefs. They’re probably the same friend that balances a significant other with a job, an internship, school, and is the president of at least one club. The good news is, most of us aren’t that put together in our twenties. You’re supposed to make mistakes and try on different identities until you figure out who you are. So, if your Friday night typically consists of lying in bed and watching Gilmore Girls while crying over who you are and who you wish you could be, that’s perfectly fine. No one truly has their life figured out in their twenties.
Source: https://unsplash.com/collections/566992/self-care?photo=0JbiBIHmQtE
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It’s okay if you’re not out partying all the time. Or at all.
In movies, people always seem to go to parties or go on sudden spur of the moment getaways to Mexico. Let’s be real, there are two huge problems with this. First, no college student has enough money to go on weekend getaways all the time. Most of us have just enough money to buy some food for the week. Second, when do these fictional college students have time for their studies? Most college students I know of spend their weekends sleeping in, watching Netflix, and begrudgingly studying for the upcoming week.
Source: https://unsplash.com/collections/566992/self-care?photo=MTTb30pMlLI
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It’s okay if you haven’t found your life long best friend yet.
A lot of people come into college with the expectation that their freshman roommate will magically become their best friend and for some lucky souls, that may have been true. However, for a lot of people, freshman year was spent being homesick and bickering with their roommate over music volume. Friends in college can be tricky. A lot of people distance themselves from their high school friends, but haven’t found close friends in college. This can leave you in an awkward limbo of loneliness, especially if your apartment life isn’t like an episode of Friends. If you’re experiencing this limbo, branch out with different groups on campus and in class. Most importantly, give yourself and your friendships time. No one becomes best friends over night!
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It’s okay if you’re not sure about your major or what you want to do for a career.
If you know what you want to do with your life, that’s great! For everyone else, I’m sorry because I know how frustrating this is. It seems incredibly unfair to make students in their twenties decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. For juniors thinking about grad school and seniors applying to grad school, the big career question is daunting and if you haven’t figured out what you want to do, your motivation behind your studies may be starting to waver. Everyone second guesses their major and their career in college. In fact, that’s kind of the point. If you don’t have it all figured out, join some clubs, talk to professors, talk to a counselor, and most importantly, relax. Even if you go through grad school and get your master’s degree or your PhD, you can still change careers if it isn’t leading to happiness down the line.
College can be an amazing experience. For most people, it’s the first time they get any real freedom and in the long run, it will probably be four years that you will treasure. No matter what your college experience has been like, the most important thing is that you’re happy. Everyone experiences college differently. Some people go to community college and never experience dorm life, some people go through college with best friends from high school, some people study 24/7, some people struggle through the whole thing, and some people party their way through. There is no wrong way to go to college, so if college isn’t feeling like a Hollywood movie full of fun roommates and parties, don’t worry. You are definitely not alone and as Stephanie Bennett Henry says, “Life is tough, my darling, but so are you.”